Sound an Important Character in the Play Anon(ymous)

NOTE: dues to a coming snowstorm, performances dates and times have changed. Showtimes are now Wednesday, February 13 at 7 pm and Thursday, February 14 at 10 am.

On Sunday morning, as students on campus are getting out of bed to head to brunch, senior Isaac Newcomb is in the sound booth at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, two hours into tech rehearsal for the play Anon(ymous). He is with the members of the crew that the audience never sees. Set designer Sarah Sheridan ’21, Lighting Designer Maggie MacNeil ’22 and Sound Designer Newcomb are running through the hundreds of cues they need to get just right during performances.

It is obvious the team has been working together for months on this project. Director Noel Carmichael utters a few words toward the stage. “Got it,” comes back to the booth. They are beyond speaking in complete sentences.

The opening performance is so near that Carmichael is counting the hours until curtain – just 72. The anxiety among the group is palpable. They have worked so hard and come so far that they know they have something good, but at this rehearsal, they also learn there are many details still to be worked out. They are all-business this morning, trying to squeeze productivity out of every minute.

Newcomb’s role as sound designer is particularly important in this play, which uses many dream-like, evocative sequences filled with abstract sound to advance the plot. Carmichael knew that Newcomb would be perfect for sound design:

Isaac Newcomb ’19 (left) designed the sound for the play; Ms. Noel Carmichael is the director. (Photo: Mr. John Spear)

In this sound clip designed by Newcomb, Angelia Castillo ’21, who plays Nemasani, sings a mournful song originally written by a group in a Lebanese refugee camp in the 1980s. The stage direction said only “Nemasani sings an ancient song:”

Listen to Isaac describe the process he used to create sound for Anon(ymous). He recorded, layered, edited and filtered audio to give the play a distinctive sound that director Noel Carmichael says is “an important character in the play.”